Rechnender Raum

In this video you can see in action Ralf Baeck’s sculpture depicting a calculating space made of sticks and lead weights in continuous movement.

The sculpture is an inverted machine in which the mechanism remains on the outside and the result appears on the inside (with red threads).

No matter how visible its operations are, we do not know its inner laws. It could represent a calculating machine or the mechanism of our thinking (the space of mental geometry), which is related to the title of the exhibition on show at the CCCB: the ars combinatoria as a way of thinking, a thinking machine. Llull said that every philosopher could be a good mechanic.

The nine sides of the sculpture lead us to think of the circular figure A of the Ars brevis, in which Llull sets the nine interrelated dignities.